Books Everywhere

It was another of those weeks when I found books, books and more books wherever I turned. Last Saturday was the first day of the sale of second hand books by Best Books Center held at YMCA at Secunderabad. I had learnt about it only two days earlier and I was raring to drop in and check out if they had a new collection. I was impatient all through my farewell to rush to the sale. No sooner had the farewell ended than I raced towards YMCA hoping no one would have picked the good ones.

The sale was in a smaller hall so there weren’t as many books as those in the previous sales. Nevertheless, the collection was good and I found some new books. I picked up a book that I had been reading about quite frequently and that was also mentioned as some kind of a classic. After a lot of deliberation I finally picked up Don Dellilo’s ‘White Noise’ and the only thing I remember was that he seemed to have been a copywriter. It was not in such a good condition but I picked it up nevertheless.

Nowadays, I am seriously into revision and editing of my first book so anything that would help make it better would be welcome I thought when I picked up ‘Line by Line’ a book about ‘How to Improve Your Own Writing’ that I got for a hundred bucks. Anything that would help me write well and make your lives easier. These were the only books I picked up on my first visit to the sale. I plan to go again later in the week.

On Sunday there was the ‘Literary Review’ supplement in ‘The Hindu’ which I read first thing in the morning. There was another front page article by Aditya Sudershan on how young but talented writers feel discouraged by debatable opinions of older and established writers about writing not being for the inexperienced and the young. I feel he is right.

Later on at Abids, I found Hemingway’s ‘The Dangerous Summer,’ a non-fiction book about rivalry between two famous bullfighters in Spain. I took it for twenty rupees. I had missed a nice copy of another of his books last Sunday so I made up for it by picking up this slim book.

On Monday I happened to visit Walden to pick up the latest issue of ‘Tinkle’ for my kid. On a separate table I saw a pile of books being sold on discount prices. I just wanted to take a look not expecting to find any good book. But as it happened, I found a brand new copy of Elmore Leonard’s collection of short stories- The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories. It was a Penguin edition and was for only a hundred rupees whereas Rs. 329 was penciled in the inside page. I picked it up though I have a used copy with me. It has nineteen stories including the classic ‘Three Ten to Yuma’ that I read somewhere has been made into a movie.

Since now I will be only a weekend Hyderabadi I think this will be the last occasion I will be buying so many books in so short a time. I forgive myself for this extravagance, a sort of retail therapy to make up for the disappointment of a faraway posting.